


Virgins are the purest: Enjolras meta

by FanfictionDeLaFinlande



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Homoromanticism, M/M, Meta, trying to show homoromantic canon roots of E/R, while putting it all in 19th century perspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 13:31:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/850090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanfictionDeLaFinlande/pseuds/FanfictionDeLaFinlande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are my musings about the subject, nothing more, nothing new,  nothing professional and NOT attempt to drown SS Enjoltaire,  just my stance on the subject why I don´t think Enjolras was sexually interested about anyone.  Please please keep your criticism constructive!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Virgins are the purest: Enjolras meta

_"Enjolras was a charming young man, who was capable of being terrible. He was angelically handsome. He was a savage Antinous. One would have said, to see the pensive thoughtfulness of his glance, that he had already, in some previous state of existence, traversed the revolutionary apocalypse. He possessed the tradition of it as though he had been a witness. He was acquainted with all the minute details of the great affair. A pontifical and warlike nature, a singular thing in a youth. He was an officiating priest and a man of war; from the immediate point of view, a soldier of the democracy; above the contemporary movement, the priest of the ideal. His eyes were deep, his lids a little red, his lower lip was thick and easily became disdainful, his brow was lofty. A great deal of brow in a face is like a great deal of horizon in a view. Like certain young men at the beginning of this century and the end of the last, who became illustrious at an early age, he was endowed with excessive youth, and was as rosy as a young girl, although subject to hours of pallor. Already a man, he still seemed a child. His two and twenty years appeared to be but seventeen; he was serious, it did not seem as though he were aware there was on earth a thing called woman. He had but one passion--the right; but one thought--to overthrow the obstacle. On Mount Aventine, he would have been Gracchus; in the Convention, he would have been Saint-Just._ _He hardly saw the roses, he ignored spring, he did not hear the carolling of the birds; the bare throat of Evadne would have moved him no more than it would have moved Aristogeiton; he, like Harmodius, thought flowers good for nothing except to conceal the sword. He was severe in his enjoyments. He chastely dropped his eyes before everything which was not the Republic_ _He was the marble lover of liberty. His speech was harshly inspired, and had the thrill of a hymn._ _He was subject to unexpected outbursts of soul. Woe to the love-affair which should have risked itself beside him! If any grisette of the Place Cambrai or the Rue Saint-Jean-de-Beauvais, seeing that face of a youth escaped from college, that page's mien, those long, golden lashes, those blue eyes, that hair billowing in the wind, those rosy cheeks, those fresh lips, those exquisite teeth, had conceived an appetite for that complete aurora, and had tried her beauty on Enjolras, an astounding and terrible glance would have promptly shown her the abyss, and would have taught her not to confound the mighty cherub of Ezekiel with the gallant Cherubino of Beaumarchais."_

_Victor Hugo, Les Misérables._

Like pure, beautiful Cosette has seen a symbol of hope for bullied, oppressed and tortured,  Enjolras is a similar symbol of Republic ideal. Hugo wrote sympathetic characters having sex outside marriage - Fantine is obvious example, and the polyamorous way how Joly and Bossuet share a mistress is written without condemnation - but when Combeferre compares angels and "purity of virgins" in the barricade, there is no reason to believe that Hugo disagrees.  Enjolras is a virgin, and it is part of his purity; he is enemy of poverty, suffering and injustice; he is beautiful like Republic ideal.  In the above quote Enjolras´good looks are compared to Antinous, supposedly very handsome young lover of Roman Emperor Hadrianus (or Hadrian in English), who was deified after his death.  Later Enjolras is compared other good-looking ancient god:  

_"His beauty, at that moment augmented by his pride, was resplendent, and he was fresh and rosy after the fearful four and twenty hours which had just elapsed, as though he could no more be fatigued than wounded. It was of him, possibly, that a witness spoke afterwards, before the council of war: "There was an insurgent whom I heard called Apollo"._

Enjolras doesn´t seem to notice that there are women on Earth - not because women or love would compromise his purity but because he is so driven by Republic. Like Harmodius (Harmodios) and Aristogeiton,  ancient Athenian lovers  who killed the tyrant Hipparchus, and were symbol of democracy to ancient Athenians, he is symbol of democracy to Hugo.  He is rejecting flowers, he is rejecting love. 

 In the end, however,  Enjolras accepts Grantaire who "admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras", because according to Hugo: "One might almost say that affinities begin with the letters of the alphabet.  _In the series O and P are inseparable._ You can, at will, pronounce O and P or Orestes and Pylades."  

This is perfectly in tradition of Romantic friendship (idea of love without sex) .  


End file.
